CANNES LIONS (A RECAP ON PINTEREST)
A great overview of the best of Cannes Lions all neatly pinned to categorised boards within Pinterest.
CAN BIRD POO DAMAGE A SMART CAR?
When KK Bold Creative Director, Clayton Hove, tweeted "Saw a bird had crapped on a Smart Car. Totalled it." Smart Car could've ignored the tweet, or made some lame joke, or worse, been defensive. Instead they tweeted back "Couldn't have been one bird. Sounds more like 4.5 million (Seriously, we did the math)." and included a link to awesomely hilarious infographic on how many various birds that exactly would be.
OPEN A BEER WITH A MAGAZINE AD
A print advertisement for Carlsberg in Belgium encouraged readers to use it as a bottle opener for their beer. The full-page ad entitled “Probably the best ad in the world” could be torn out, folded, and used to open a bottle of Carlsberg. Check out the video.
ZYNGA UNVEILS NEW GAMES AND IT’S OWN SOCIAL NETWORK
Zynga announced a host of new games, including a new With Friends title and several new Ville titles, at its Zynga Unleashed event on Tuesday. The company also unveiled Zynga With Friends, a unified social network that will allow players to build a profile and connect with other players, no matter the platform or device.
LEGO: BUILD WITH CHROME
It was only a matter of time before Lego released something like this and it’s pretty cool! Lego and Google Chrome have joined forces to create Build, the largest Lego set the world has ever seen, online on a Google map. The video above is one of the ads for Build and shows the Sydney Harbour Bridge being created. Build allows users to construct a world of 3D Lego creations online anywhere in Australia or New Zealand, publish it and share with friends. Users simply choose a plot of land on the Lego Google map and start building. The launch coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Lego brick in Australia and there are plans to roll this out globally later via Google Chrome.
HOW NIKE+ MADE ‘JUST DO IT’ OBSOLETE
Nike and R/GA recently used a forum at the Cannes Lions festival to celebrate FuelBand, their latest collaboration in a growing set of workout-measurement services that are completely changing the formerly product-focused company's approach to marketing. In a masterful presentation, the company's VP of digital sport, Stefan Olander, traced the history of Nike as a business and as a marketer, and said Nike+ is completely revolutionising its relationship with consumers. "Nike is becoming a company that isn't just focused on products, but is focused on products and services," he said. "It used to be that when you bought a product, that was the end of the relationship. It's classic marketing. 'Great, you bought the product. See you in a year, when the next campaign comes along.' That thinking has flipped on its head. Now, the purchase of any Nike product needs to be the beginning of the relationship we have with the consumer."
"We have the phenomenal privilege of having one of the most powerful brand statements of all time in 'Just do it'", Olander said. "I had the fortune of being global head of advertising and communications for Nike for a couple of years, and it was amazing, the campaigns we got to work on. … The change, though, is that people now demand us not to say 'Just do it,' they say 'Help me just do it.' 'Enable me to just do it.' And the role of the brand changes from one of inspiration to one of inspiration and enablement."
RADIO SHOW NATURALLY REPEL MOSQUITOES
Outdoor magazine, Go Outside, partnered with a Sao Paulo radio station to add a 15 khz frequency sound to its normal music program between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. The frequency can’t be heard by humans, but to mosquitoes, it mimics the sound of a dragonfly – a natural predator of mosquitoes. The concept encouraged listeners to head outside without having to worry about annoying mosquito bites.
UNIQLO TURN PINTEREST INTO GIANT BRANDED MOSAIC
Uniqlo and FirstBorn team up for a project that owns Pinterest - literally.
To wake Pinterest users from a scrolling slumber, the agency created 100 separate shell Pinterest accounts that pinned images simultaneously. As users scrolled through their favorite categories, they came across all the images, which combined to create giant blocks that "animated" when scrolled through.
The giant branded mosaic can be seen by Pinterest users, whether or not they follow the Uniqlo brand page. The project targets five categories on which mosaics will appear: men's apparel, women's apparel, geek, fitness and sports.
I’M IN LOVE WITH HALO
The next installment in the massively popular science-fiction video game series Halo doesn’t come out until November, but you can get your Halo fix now with “I’m in Love With Halo.” Parodying British boy band One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful,” the music video and the rewritten lyrics show much love for Halo’s Master Chief and the gaming franchise in general. “Ten years ago, we said hello, and had the time of our lives playing Halo. Now Master Chief, you’re fast asleep, and I am left playing n00bs on Halo Reach,” the men sing enthusiastically. Nice idea.
CANNES: 100 BEAUTIFUL SLIDES
A great curated Slideshare deck of the 100+ Best Slides from the entire Cannes Lions Festival, meaning if you missed a session, couldn’t remember that kick-ass slide or spent your whole Cannes Lions trip partying on the beach, you can utilise some of this to convince your boss you might have actually went to the sessions!
WHY DOES A MCDONALDS BURGER LOOK DIFFERENT IN THE ADS VERSUS THE RESTAURANT?
A question on Twitter from Isabel B asked "Why does your food look different in the advertising than what is in the store?" McDonalds in Canada responded with a video looking at the work that goes on behind the scenes of a burger photo shoot which explains everything. A very smart piece of content.
IN SEARCH OF YOUNG TALENT, GROUP M LAUNCHES REALITY SHOW IN CHINA
Talk to agency executives in China and they'll say talent recruitment and retention are the most pressing issues facing the industry. WPP's Group M is confronting this challenge with a unique tactic: a reality show. Called "Young Power," the 10-episode online series is being promoted on popular Chinese websites and seat-back taxi screens in four major cities. The 10 college graduates on the elimination-style show complete various media-planning tasks, with the winner going on to a permanent job within Group M and its agencies.
The goal isn't to trigger a flood of applications, said Roger Li, chief talent officer for Group M China. Rather, it's to help bright young Chinese understand the basics of media investment and management, and inspire interest in the industry as a career option.
MERCEDES-BENZ SLS AMG ROADSTER VS GOLF BALL
Watch Formula 1™ legend David Coulthard and pro-golfer Jake Shepherd set a new world record - farthest golf shot caught in a moving car - with the help of the Mercedes--Benz SLS AMG Roadster. The car caught the ball 275 metres away from the tee.
JORDAN KNIGHT SINGS OLD NAVY CATALOGUE
New Kid On the Block, Jordan Knight, sings the retailer’s summer catalogue, with ditties about cargo shorts, bikinis and tank tops. The video, from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, is made up to look like a direct-response ad for a new Knight album. The push coincides with the launch of Old Navy’s online summer catalogue, which will be available only to Old Navy fans on Facebook. Knight will “describe each item in the catalogue in song,” according to a Crispin rep. Of course Knight and Old Navy are in on the joke.
NIKE FUELBAND HACKED TO TRACK TWEETS RATHER THAN STEPS
Klout is an inherently cold product. It’s a tool interested in quantifying our popularity as a measurable stat - questionably useful for some industry professionals, but way too calculating for the casually self-aggrandizing social media user. Yet something about this Nike Fuelband hack by Stinkdigital finds a way to bridge the gap of cut-throat analytics with friendly usability. It’s called TweetFuel and it’s a digital hijacking of the Nike Fuelband that forces Nike+ to count tweets rather than steps. Whenever someone tweets @stinkdigital, a modified Fuelband, hooked to a motor, spins. The more followers that person had, the longer the Fuelband spins. In an era of +1s and +Ks, it’s a somewhat silly, almost gameshow-esque reward for a social media mention. The even cooler level, though, is that the firm tweaked some of the Nike+ code to allow (okay, force) Nike’s built-in graph to measure all these tweets. So a few RTs become a parallel to a sprint in their interface. A story that goes viral could resemble a marathon through the day.